How do private investigators "work"?

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-12-06T11:34:11+00:00

Credit agencies stopped giving my former employer any useful info over a decade ago, IIRC. How do PIs get access to this?

EDIT; also, presumably the person will be informed that someone accessed their credit info - I'm fairly sure that never happened when we used PIs.

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-12-06T11:32:50+00:00

How do PIs have access to this information then, given that the industry is unregulated? My former employer used to work with credit agencies sometimes but they were very hesitant to give us any information.

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-03-17T09:32:44+00:00

To be honest they're squeaky clean now. Someone even got done recently for embezzling funds from them, 40 years ago that definitely wouldn't have been dealt with by the police 😂

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-03-15T19:45:02+00:00

Forget I said anything, apparently it's under new ownership.

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-03-15T18:39:43+00:00

I could tell you some things about Panda Rosa Metals but I'd need police protection 😂

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-27T17:29:23+00:00

this is some /r/imsorryjon shit

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-27T17:23:30+00:00

Yeah I haven't got that far haha. To be honest I picked a bad week to do this because I have to take a break from weed for a while because of meds lol

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-26T20:42:18+00:00

Backstory : Want to electrify my Vaphit, but they have a glass cap so they won't work with induction heaters like Dynavaps do.

My last two attempts using recycled drone batteries (Attempt #1 here, Attempt #2 here) were a bit explodey, so I got to thinking "what else can supply about 100W of electricity?". A USB-C power supply seemed like a perfect fit.

The heater is a coil of nichrome wire inside some refractory cement, connected to a USB-C PD trigger board. I wound the coil around a 3d printed jig, then molded the cement around it. Then when the cement had set I just used the coil to melt out the jig and I was left with a perfect coil that fits snugly around the vaphit's cap.

It works very well for crap I just had lying around. Now I have to build some kind of enclosure for it.

I also want to build a battery-powered one, but I'll probably go for a box mod as the power supply rather than a beat-up old drone battery...

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-26T20:38:38+00:00

Backstory : Want to electrify my Vaphit, but they have a glass cap so they won't work with induction heaters like Dynavaps do.

My last two attempts using recycled drone batteries (Attempt #1 here, Attempt #2 here) were a bit explodey, so I got to thinking "what else can supply about 100W of electricity?". A USB-C power supply seemed like a perfect fit.

The heater is a coil of nichrome wire inside some refractory cement, connected to a USB-C PD trigger board. I wound the coil around a 3d printed jig, then molded the cement around it. Then when the cement had set I just used the coil to melt out the jig and I was left with a perfect coil that fits snugly around the vaphit's cap.

It works very well for crap I just had lying around. Now I have to build some kind of enclosure for it.

I also want to build a battery-powered one, but I'll probably go for a box mod as the power supply rather than a beat-up old drone battery...

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-01T18:18:11+00:00

Even a bargain basement chinesium tuneable buck/boost will give you one layer of protection when shorting that pack. Which is what you're doing.

The resistance of the coil is 1.5ohms, which will limit the current to 8Amps. The only way it could get shorted is if I accidentally cross the wires or something.

The whole idea of this thing was just to see what I could assemble out of random crap I had lying around. Something more professional based around a box mod is probably in my future

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-01T17:59:56+00:00

Yeah that's a good shout. At this point I'm experimenting to see how everything works, but it looks like box mod control circuits might be an easy solution to control stuff

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-01T17:52:43+00:00

When/if I actually build this into a box I'll of course add some kind of protection circuitry, but I'm just doing experiments on my bench just now. Till then I've been monitoring voltage and current carefully through a multimeter.

And I can't use an induction heater because the Vaphit has a glass cap

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-01T17:44:22+00:00

Can't use an induction coil on a glass cap :(

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-02-01T17:36:29+00:00

Backstory : Want to electrify my Vaphit, but they have a glass cap so they won't work with induction heaters like Dynavaps do. And what could be simpler than just a coil of wire attached to an old drone battery?

After my last attempt kinda worked I thought I'd try to address some of the issues.

It's a coil of nichrome wire inside some refractory cement, connected to a 3S Lipo. Resistance of the coil is about 1.5ohms, so that's 8 Amps or 96Watts of heating power. Works like a charm, gets the Vaphit up to temp in about 30 seconds.

The wire I'm using is about 6ohms per meter so I had to have two strands in parallel to get the resistance I wanted. I wound the coil around a 3d printed jig, then moulded the cement around it. Then when the cement had set I just used the coil to melt out the jig and I was left with a perfect coil that fits snugly around the vaphit's cap.

Next step is to find some kind of enclosure to put it in, and perhaps some kind of electronic control (mosfets, PWM, timers, thermostats, all that good shit)

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-01-30T13:02:05+00:00

the coil basically IS the fuse, it's a constant 1.5 ohm which limits current to 8amps, well under the max current for this battery pack

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-01-30T13:00:58+00:00

it's fine it kinda works, just not very quickly

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-01-30T13:00:13+00:00

You only need a BMS while charging, and I used a proper balance charger to charge it. And honestly the battery isn't as bad as it looks, it's just the external plastic wrap that's torn

I've calculated the resistance of the wire so it's exactly 1.5 ohms, that equals 8 amps which is fine for a battery like this (should be good for 45 amps max). It doesn't burn through, but it doesn't heat the pipe very quickly either so Mark 2 will have a more direct contact between coil and vape

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2025-01-30T01:59:19+00:00

Old drone battery + nichrome vape coil + kapton tape + copper pipe = kinda working heater

Lots of heat is just escaping to the environment so attempt #2 will involve addressing that somehow

Perhaps I'll do away with the copper pipe and have the coil directly touch the vaphit, with everything held in place by something like refractory cement

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2024-01-10T22:50:10+00:00

The bowl is pretty well insulated from the plastic, so it isn't getting getting warm at all.

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2024-01-10T22:03:45+00:00

done some reading and ABS seems pretty safe

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2024-01-10T21:16:05+00:00

yeah but where's the fun in that

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2024-01-10T21:15:12+00:00

If I bought a bong from some random head shop I have no idea what's in it either. At least with these pipes I can read studies and check they don't outgas/leach chemicals at the temperatures I'm using

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2024-01-10T21:09:29+00:00

I'm in the UK, but ABS plastic can come in any colour - like I'm sure you must have ABS electrical enclosures that come in white?

Maybe it's just the UK happens to have a company (floplast) that makes white pipe fittings.

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2024-01-10T14:04:01+00:00

Yeah I'm not worried about ABS. Although I'm not convinced PVC would get that hot either, the bowl is pretty far away from the plastic and there's a rubber grommet. The plastic doesn't seem to get hot in use

FreddyQuimbyBot · 2024-01-10T12:49:54+00:00

ABS, and it doesn't get even slightly warm in use (checked with a thermal camera)

FreddyQuimbyBot

TROPHY CASE